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I Loved ABBA
When ABBA wasn’t cool
Would someone tell me how to make a backwards B so that it points in the opposite direction of the second B, like in their logo? I guess there’s some way to do it, but after hours of trying, the regular first B will have to suffice.
In the 1970s, just living in California was cool. I didn’t think you couldn’t be cool if you lived in California. But I was wrong.
“Waterloo” is the song that won the Eurovision Contest for ABBA in 1974. Two years later, it became a hit in the United States, climbing to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. At the time, it was a decent song. In fact, I downright loved it. But I was careful not to love it too much. It was borderline not cool.
I’ll just come right out and say it: I was gay when gay wasn’t cool, even in a Southern California kind of way. You could only go so far until you’d find yourself being called a woman, a faggot, a queer — those were the choice words of the day. Gay still wasn’t quite a thing.
Like the other boys in junior high school (now known as “Middle School”), a façade wasn’t expected, it was demanded. One did not step outside of the line that separated boy from girl. That’s not what being gay is about, but that’s beside the point. Through peer pressure, I was expected to “man-up” by smoking pot, drinking terrible booze, and trying to get my…
